The Bank Bus

When I was fourteen, I was in ninth grade. I liked hanging out with my friends and shopping, like a lot of other fourteen-year-old girls. However, unlike many other American teenagers, I didn't live in America. I lived in Germany with my family near an American army base that was in a town called Baumholder.

One sunny Saturday, I planned to meet my friends Dee and Gavin at the PX. (The PX is a store like WalMart on a military base.) We wanted to mess around on base and do some shopping and go to the snack bar for some nachos.

I lived in a small village called Kronweiler. To get to Baumholder from Kronweiler, you could either drive or take the bus. My Dad had the car that Saturday, so my Mom couldn't drive me to town. Therefore, I opted to take the bus.

My Mom gave me a 5 DM coin, which was more than enough for the ride to Baumholder. I walked down the hill past the poop pile (German farmers have big steaming piles of pig and cow shit outside their farms that they use to fertilize their fields) and proceeded to wait at the bus stop. The bus was supposed to come at 1:30pm and there was only one bus per day. Our village was very small and had limited bus service.

I waited at the bus stop with a couple old German ladies and hoped the bus would come soon. We were down wind from the manure and the odor wafting our way was pungent.

Thankfully, the bus rounded the corner and was even about 10 minutes early! What luck! I followed the two German ladies up the steps onto the bus. Then I paused. Hmmm. The bus didn't look like other busses that I had ridden before. Instead of rows of seats facing forward, there were single seats lining each side of the bus. Also, it was a short bus and my usual bus was a regular sized bus, about the size of school bus.

The ladies ahead of me nodded to the driver, didn't pay him and made their way to the back of the bus to the seats. I thought maybe they were so old that they got to ride the bus for free, so I handed the driver my 5 Marks. He motioned to the window at the back of the bus. I thought maybe this bus had some different system, where you don't pay the driver and instead, pay the ticket taker behind the window.

So, I approached the window at the back of the bus and looked at the ladies tentatively. They motioned for me to go first, so I plunked down my 5 Marks on the silver tray under the window. The attendant took it and replaced it with 5 one Mark pieces and turned the tray back to me. I was confused for a minute, and thought that maybe he meant to give me 3 Marks back in change, but had mis-counted.

I thought for a second...and then it hit me! I remembered seeing the sign on the side of the bus that said "Sparkasse" in big red letters. Sparkasse was the name of a German bank! Of course! I was on a BANK BUS! The attendent was actually a bank teller and thought I wanted change for my five Mark piece! Only in Germany would you find something like this.

As I was having this epiphany, the real bus zipped past the bank bus, but didn't stop, because now there were no patrons waiting at the bus stop.

I turned bright red with embarrassment and frustration. I glanced at the smiling German women, who were patiently waiting their turn to do their banking. Grabbing my change, I raced off the bus and headed back up the hill past the poop pile to my house, the 5 one Mark pieces jingling in my pocket.